 |
| Images Courtesy: Paramount/Arrow Video |
For the past several years Arrow Video has been expanding the types of films they release, going beyond their original mandate of focusing on cult and niche genre films (although they certainly are still doing an amazing job of that - see the recent Enter The Video Store box set) to include more art-house films, world cinema titles, and neglected should-be classics. The goal here is very clear: to go beyond just being the "Criterion of cult films," as they often have been called over the years, and become more of a direct competitor to Criterion in all aspects. An early indicator of this, which really made an impression on me at the time as a change in trajectory, was their stellar special edition of Cinema Paradiso in 2017. Or perhaps that one is on my mind because their latest release in their more Criterion-adjacent line of titles is in many ways a sibling film to Cinema Paradiso: another wistfully nostalgic, sincerely emotional love letter to early cinema, told in swooning period style: Martin Scorsese's beautiful, underseen Hugo. While at first glance a ten-year-old Martin Scorsese film might seem an odd choice for a lavish three-disc Arrow limited edition, this is actually a perfect candidate: a masterful film made by a film-lover for other film-lovers, which didn't quite get the attention or the success that it deserved at the time (because it frankly was a marketing nightmare that was always going to be difficult to sell to mainstream audiences), and which has consequently been rather neglected by its home studio. Giving it the sort of spectacular special edition that it deserves, with a full disc of extremely thoughtful and academically rigorous special features, feels long overdue, and feels like a welcome attempt to canonize Hugo as a modern classic of international cinema, rather than an odd misfit in an iconic director's storied career.
THE FILM:
Based on the beloved illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, Hugo tells the whimsical but bittersweet story of three lost souls trying to find themselves and their sense of purpose in 1931 Paris, against the backdrop of the quickly-changing early cinema. Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living inside the walls of the grandiose Paris train station, where his clockmaker father (Jude Law, in flashbacks) had installed the station's numerous intricate clocks, which were cared for by his now-deceased family. Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) is also an orphan looking for her place in the world, living with her godfather Papa Georges (Ben Kingsley). Georges is a toymaker who is a broken, empty shell of a man, whose embittered existence still occasionally shows glimpses of the whimsical dreamer he once was, in a past he refuses to talk about. The two children discover that they, and their tragic father figures, share some kind of connection to a broken clockwork automaton that Hugo's father was trying to restore for a museum before he died, and they set out to discover what the connection is. The quest takes them on a journey through the history of the early days of cinema - particularly the history of film pioneer Georges Méliès of A Trip to the Moon fame - with its magical hopes and broken dreams, as Hugo becomes convinced that healing for all three of them can be found in the remembering of art and inventions forgotten.
It is a very narratively-dense and high-concept story for a nominal family film, and while kids likely would love the portions of the film that involve Hugo and Isabelle adventuring through Paris together and racing around the train station to outwit Sacha Baron Cohen's police inspector villain, they would likely be totally baffled by all the talk of Georges Méliès, and how the lack of interest in film preservation caused so much wonderful early cinematic art to be lost to time and apathy. While family-friendly, it really isn't a kid's movie so much as it is a film for history-minded cinema lovers who still have a joy for mischievous and fantastical youthful adventure stories. If you're an adult who loves Cinema Paradiso or Singin' in the Rain or The Artist, and who also loves the youthful nostalgia of Stranger Things or Super 8 or Stand By Me, then you are the main target audience of Hugo, much more than your theoretical kids are. Scorsese made it in part because Selznick's story spoke to both his own childhood and his passion for film preservation, and in part because he wanted to make a movie he could show to his grandkids, but while the kids might like it, it is his like-minded cinephiles and film preservationists who will love it. However, that complicated question of who Hugo is actually for made it an incredibly difficult film to market, especially since the connection to Georges Méliès and the history of cinema takes a while to show up in the film, and would be very difficult to explain in a trailer. Paramount clearly had no idea how to sell this movie: the trailers and marketing were absolutely mystifying, and I remember seeing it in theaters because I was very curious what a Scorsese family film might be like, and being completely surprised when all the stuff about Georges Méliès and the history of cinema enters the plot, because none of the marketing even hinted at it. A lot of cinephiles who would adore it probably skipped it, and plenty of families who went probably left the theater with kids who had gotten lost partway through. It wound up barely making back its budget at the global box office, which is really a shame, because this is a wonderful, thoughtful, extremely unique film.
The story, very faithfully adapted from Brian Selznick's novel by screenwriter John Logan (The Aviator, Skyfall), is wonderful. As both a poignant and bittersweet coming-of-age tale, and as a fictionalized but broadly faithful account of the brilliance, downfall, obscurity, and redemption of Georges Méliès, it is very successful and genuinely moving. Hugo and Papa Georges' parallel character arcs are both wonderfully told, with emotional insight and depth, and the world of the story is filled with rich and memorable characters with small story arcs of their own (played by a stacked ensemble of character actors including Michael Stuhlbarg, Helen McCrory, Richard Griffiths, Emily Mortimer, and Christopher Lee), who give life to Selznick's highly stylized and fanciful imagined version of early-1930s Paris. The ways in which it is grounded in actual history make it very compelling, and will surely inspire some viewers to check out nonfiction biographies of Méliès, but what makes it feel so special is the heightened, fantastical, almost fairytale-esque telling of the story, which seems to have been a bit inspired by Amelie as well as Cinema Paradiso, and which has a lot in common with the fairytale 1960s Baltimore of The Shape of Water (albeit a good deal less dark).
That definitely is not a style which one would immediately associate with Martin Scorsese - he who made a career on gritty, violent, blue-collar realism. But Scorsese has always loved playing with genre, style, and form, and while he certainly returns the gangster film over and over, he hates to make the same movie twice in a row, and has a career filled with formal experiments. Because of his deep love of cinema from the world over, and its history, he was absolutely the perfect director for this film. He brings the story to life with beautiful vibrance and romanticism, creating an absolutely perfect atmosphere for his fanciful Paris of a bygone age, with some top-tier help from Howard Shore's beautiful score. As several of the special features point out, there are some very striking parallels between the character of Hugo and Scorsese's own childhood, and so the story feels very personal to the great auteur. Not to mention that the back half of the story is basically about Scorsese's other great passion besides filmmaking: the preservation of film history, and why it is important. One might not expect a very faithful adaptation of a novel to end up being one of Scorsese's more obviously personal films, but it really is. As is fitting for such a personal film, he beautifully directs his ensemble cast, all of whom give excellent performances. Ben Kingsley is as wonderful as ever as the embittered and deeply tragic Papa Georges, whose layers are gradually revealed throughout the film. And as both of the film's child stars, Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz are outstanding, showing themselves to be among the best young actors of their generation, and conveying emotional depth beyond their years.
And while Scorsese generally has the reputation of an artist with a very specific vision who does his own thing, he makes the brilliant choice to use Brian Selznick's gorgeous illustrations as the storyboard for the film, recreating most of the images from the book on-screen. That makes this both a visually and narratively very faithful adaptation, while still being a distinctly Martin Scorsese film. These visuals, of course, are also thanks to the brilliant work of recurring Scorsese cinematographer Robert Richardson (The Aviator, Shutter Island). Famously, this was the first and only time that Scorsese shot a film in 3D, having been enamored by the narrative possibilities of how it could be used to tell this specific story, and while the format obviously can be a very mixed bag, he and Richardson knock it out of the park here. It is deeply ironic that this is considered by many to be one of the best-looking films from the 2000s/2010s 3D wave, yet it did so poorly in theaters and so few people saw it as intended. Fortunately Arrow has included the 3D version in this box set, for the small niche of people who still have 3D TVs and blu-ray players, although most will be watching the film in 2D. Either way, Hugo is still an absolutely beautiful, visually rich movie. It does look unmistakably digital, having been shot in 2K on the early-model Arri Alexa cameras before they looked quite as filmic as they often do now, but definitely not in a bad or ugly way; it may look digital, but it still looks extremely cinematic, and has held up visually better than plenty of other early digital features, thanks largely to Scorsese and Richardson's expert talents and years of collaboration.
THE ARROW SPECIAL EDITION:
The gorgeous visuals of Hugo get the best possible presentation on Arrow's three-disc set. Since the film was shot and mastered in digital 2K, unlike Arrow's editions of older films there is obviously not much room for a new restoration; what we get on the 1080p disc is simply Scorsese and Richardson's 2011 presentation and grading of the film, albeit given the benefits of modern mastering and encoding (to be clear, it looks absolutely beautiful). However, the disc does include both the 2D and 3D versions of the film. The UHD in the combo pack is where there is some new restoration work, with the film getting a new Dolby Vision HDR grade. The colors and contrast in Hugo are extremely rich and heightened to begin with, making it one that will benefit from HDR, even if the 4K disc is obviously upscaled from 2K. It is worth noting that normally Arrow does their UHD and blu-ray releases separately, rather than as a combo pack; I think this is the only combo-pack release they have done, and I suspect that is because the 3D version can only be presented on blu-ray, and not on the UHD. There is a blu-ray-only version of the set, however.
The set comes with a third disc absolutely loaded with special features, and fans of the film will find the extras invaluable. Given how much this film is about the history of cinema, this set has some of the most scholarly special features I have ever encountered: half of the new extras are about the production of the film, and half are about the history that the film is about, and the real life of Georges Méliès in the time period covered by the movie.
Starting the disc are the new extras about the production of the film: long, in-depth, very thorough and thoughtful interviews with author Brian Selznick, cinematographer Robert Richardson, composer Howard Shore, and Scorsese biographer and historian Ian Christie who was there on the set of Hugo observing Scorsese's artistic process. Film lovers will eat up these interviews, as they all really dive into the specifics of each person's area of expertise. Selznick, Richardson, and Shore get very in-depth about their creative processes on Hugo. Selznick has a ton of insights about how he wrote the novel, and the journey from page to screen. The interview with Richardson is one of the most in-depth and technical interviews with a cinematographer that I have ever seen in the special features of a film, and is full of great, very specific knowledge about how this early digital-3D feature was made. The interview with Shore is a fascinating look into the creative process of a master artist in his own right. The Ian Christie interview is also quite fascinating, as it puts Hugo in the context of Scorsese's career, and delves into the ways in which it was such a personal film for the director (Christie is also unexpectedly honest about how Hugo is one of his less-favorite Scorsese films, which is interesting). Since Scorsese did not return to do a new retrospective interview, this is the next best thing.
The other new extras are all about the real history behind the film, putting it in a scholarly context of a different sort. They begin with a visual essay focusing on how the themes of Hugo tie in very closely with Scorsese's lifelong passion and crusade for film preservation, and for the importance of knowing and preserving film history. They then continue with no less than THREE different extras about the life of Georges Méliès and how it relates to the film: one about Méliès' importance to the development of cinema and special effects as art forms, one about his place in the broader context of early film history, and one about the actual events of his late life, downfall into obscurity, and eventual artistic redemption, as fictionalized in the film. These are very valuable resources to anyone who watches the film and wants to learn the truth of the events (the film is broadly accurate but takes some liberties, and of course there was no heroic orphan boy named Hugo who played a role in the events; he is an entirely made-up character). They do a wonderful job of placing the film in the historical context of the time it is portraying. I haven't encountered many special editions of films that spend quite this much time on the real-life historical context of a period-set story, and I wish more did; it really is fascinating.
Rounding out the disc, of course, are all of the extras ported over from the previous Paramount blu-ray. This includes five archival featurettes, and a commentary by an expert on Georges Méliès.
Hugo is a wonderful film. While it may not quite be one of Scorsese's best, it is absolutely great in its own right, and a minor masterpiece that is certainly very unique among his body of work. It may not have immediately found its audience in theaters, as family-film crowds seemed about as baffled by it as the studio which had no idea how to market it, but it has become a fairly beloved movie in cinephile circles due to its word of mouth reputation. Arrow Video canonizing it as a worthy modern classic with this release definitely should help solidify that reputation, especially with its very scholarly, film-history-oriented roster of extras.
Cinephiles who appreciate a bit of youthful nostalgia and whimsy with their stories of the history of movies will absolutely love Hugo, and if you have not seen it yet, I cannot recommend it highly enough. And if you love Hugo, or are pretty sure you will, then this Arrow release is essential: a stellar special edition which pulls out all the stops for its very worthy subject. Pick it up.
Score for the film:
Score for the disc:
- Christopher S. Jordan
Share this review!